Is this the Derby you know?

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‘Derby a city, more like a town, in the centre of England’ . For more than 30 years living in Derby, I have spent a good two thirds of this wondering where in the world would be better to live. And believe me there are some. There is Vancouver where the City lights meet the vast and pounding Pacific Ocean.

There is Johannesburg where skyscrapers battle for prescendence with the awe of distant mountains. Or take London where the glitterati party hard and the libraries of the greats meet the artists of the future.

Yes we are Derby, Super Derby. And it don’t have non of that stuff. We have Allenton shops where the neighbours and shop workers still know each other’s business. We have Darley Park where fireworks light up the night against classical music.

And the City Centre with its shops that keep us all with that sense of normality of ‘going down town’ on a Saturday afternoon.

Ok it’s not the biggest or the ‘artsy-est’, or the richest by a stretch.  But we all haven’t yet decided there is a good enough reason to move away.

Maybe we are a city that likes its roots. The people that make up our wider Derbarian family have an elaborate network of extended family that go way back. ‘Back in the Day’ - when people worked in the foundry, the industrial pulse of the midlands, kicking out trains and rolls Royce engines.  Maybe that is why we they named it Pride Park.

Yes Pride Park -the place where the spirit of football still remembers the old baseball grounds where real people on real wages didn’t think nothin’ of going to the game and still had change for a pint of mild on the way home.

And alright we only get a sniff of the Prem every once in a while when the players kick their proverbial butts up to the world’s football platform. Ok we’re not there now, but at least we have real fans, where football may not always be about winning.

Derby is about the taking part, the living out of life. That season ticket, the same stand, row, and the same neighbour,  the cheers and chants and the highs and the lows.

That’s what Derby is, Super Derby. It’s our roots and we like it that way.